By: Dennis Vannatta

1

            Zeke got a lot of mileage out of killing his little brother, Jacky Boy.  Those who’d always suspected that Zeke carried some dark thing within him saw Jacky Boy’s death as the inevitable sprouting of that bad seed.  At least a few, though, looked upon him with compassion.  This will scar him, they said.  He will carry this with him for the rest of his life.

            Zeke was bemused by the compassion, which should have been directed at Jacky Boy, shouldn’t it?  He was the one who was dead.  But then he thought, no, you can feel compassion only for someone who can feel something back.  Zeke felt something, all right, but he wasn’t sure what.  Maybe that’s what Mrs. Oetting meant when he overheard her say that he’d bear that scar the rest of his life:  the inability to understand, or even remember, what he’d felt when Jacky Boy slipped off the hood of the car Zeke as driving and died on Bender’s Plank Road.

            How could anyone who knew what had really happened out there blame Zeke?  True, he was the older brother by two years, but you wouldn’t know it by looking.  Jacky Boy had hit his growth spurt the year before and passed Zeke in height by an inch, was the better athlete, stronger and quicker.  Therefore Zeke couldn’t have made him get on the hood of Hank Reid’s old Ford Fairlane even if he’d wanted to.  Didn’t try to shame him into it, either, after he, Zeke, had ridden on the hood a quarter mile down Bender’s Plank Road, Hank driving.  Jacky Boy had volunteered for it, plain and simple.  Climbed up on the hood and lay down on his back, knees up and head resting on the windshield, clutching a windshield wiper in each hand.  Hank refused to drive him.  Jacky Boy damn near begged Zeke to.  Maybe it was one of those little brother has to outdo big brother things, who knows?  Zeke couldn’t refuse Jacky Boy anything, not when he begged.

            So he drove, but no faster than Hank had driven him.  Hank himself swore to that.  Zeke drove right down the middle of the blacktop, no swerving, no trying to scare Jacky Boy, certainly no trying to throw him off.  But one of the windshield wipers came off in his hand, and Jacky Boy flailed wildly over onto his side trying to grab the other one, and he just kept on going over the fender.  Hank said he heard Jacky Boy’s head hit the pavement.

            Zeke and Hank were taken down to the county sheriff’s office.  The two gave their accounts, Zeke’s flat and factual, not characterizing the event, almost like he was striving to be fair about the thing so others could reach their own conclusions.  It was Hank who, crying, snot running over his lips and hanging from his chin, barely able to get the words out, swore it was an accident.

            When they’d finished, though, Sheriff White looked at Zeke and said, “Son, that boy was your little brother.  You the same as killed him.”

            That’s when Zeke’s father, who’d said not a word until then, finally spoke, or as close to speech as he was capable of at the moment.  He closed his eyes and clenched his fists, pumping them up and down, exclaiming, “Oooo!  Oooo!  Oooo!” almost comically, like one who’d missed the million-dollar jackpot by a single digit.

            That’s why, thereafter, when Zeke spoke of “killing” his little brother, he thought the term was appropriate.  If anyone disputed it, they could go talk to Sheriff White.

*

            Zeke was never clear on what course the law took on the affair.  No charges of any kind were brought against him or Hank.  Which isn’t to say that there were no consequences.  There were consequences aplenty, he would have told anyone who inquired.  But what, exactly, were the consequences?  “My whole life,” he might have said, but that wouldn’t have clarified anything for anybody, least of all for Zeke.

            All he knew for a fact was that he was released into the custody of his father, who drove him straight home.  The ten o’clock news wasn’t even over.

            How was that possible?  There’d been that time, hazy in the distant past, before he’d gone out in Hank’s Fairlane, Jacky Boy tagging along in the back seat.  Then had come his own ride on the hood, exhilarating and terrifying.  Had Hank dared him to do it?  Had Zeke climbed on and dared Hank to drive him?  He couldn’t remember, it was too long ago.  Then Jacky Boy was on the hood, Zeke driving.  Then the windshield wiper snaps off in Jacky Boy’s hand, Jacky Boy flailing over to grab the other and going on off, and Hank said he heard Jacky Boy’s head crack on the blacktop although that was later when Hank said it and a goddamn lie anyway because Zeke was there and he never heard a thing.  Next there was . . . something happened.  What? . . . A car stopped.  Somebody called somebody, and then the sheriff came out and then Zeke’s dad.  Or did Zeke’s dad come first and then the sheriff?  Did Hank’s dad ever come?  Zeke couldn’t remember.  Then he was in the sheriff’s office, and the sheriff said he’d killed his little brother, and Zeke said that’s right, I’m a killer.  Then his dad took him home where his mother was watching the ten o’clock news.  Apparently she didn’t know what had happened yet because she wasn’t crying or anything.  His father took her into the kitchen to tell her while Zeke stayed in the den and watched the sports report.  The Cards had beaten the Cubs again, yay.

            All that in one evening?  It wasn’t possible.  There just wasn’t enough time.  It threw off time for Zeke the rest of his life.  He was so uneasy about it that for a period of about two months shortly after his first marriage he began wearing two watches, one on each wrist, so that he could judge the accuracy of one by the other.  But then he realized that that wouldn’t work because how would he know which was the more accurate?

            It’d been a long day.  And it wasn’t even finished.

            After the sports report was over, he went to bed.  He lay there, everything going round and round.  He might have gone to sleep for a while.  Or maybe not.  It was hard to say.

            He went back downstairs.  His parents were still in the kitchen.  His mother was crying, which leant everything an air of normalcy because it would have been odd if she hadn’t cried, what with her baby boy having been killed only a couple of hours earlier.  Yes, it calmed him down some, his mother crying, right when things had started to go round and round again.

            But then he heard his mother say in a hoarse voice that sounded like she had a terrible sore throat, “I didn’t love him enough.  I’m to blame.  I never showed him enough love.”

            This was upsetting enough to Zeke that he was all set to charge into the kitchen and declare, “Hey, you loved Jacky Boy plenty.  Jacky Boy didn’t need any more love.”

            But before he could act, his father said, “That’s not true, Natalie.  You gave Zeke as much love as a mother could give.”

            So she was talking about Zeke!  A real surprise.

            He tiptoed back upstairs to his bedroom.  The long day was finally over.

2

            But his life went on.  He felt like, with such a big thing as that—his brother being killed by an accident or God or Zeke—everything should just stop.  Or if not stop there should be a huge high wall, and everything that happened before Jacky Boy’s killing would be one side, with the other side containing what followed.  But it didn’t take him even a day to conclude that there was only one side, call it what you will, and he was always on it.

            They held Jacky Boy’s funeral three days after his killing. The entire eighth-grade class sat in a special roped-off section in the auditorium just behind the roped-off pew reserved for the family.  Some of Zeke’s sophomore classmates were there, too, but they didn’t have a special section.

            Zeke sat between his parents, feeling the weight of all those stares on the back of his head.

            He thought it would be all right once the minister began speaking because then the audience would have something else to think about and could quit focusing on him.  But that didn’t happen.

            Instead, the minister began talking about “praying for him” and “enveloping him in our healing love” and “helping him to walk in the path of righteousness,” and Zeke realized it wasn’t Jacky Boy that he was talking about.  No, it was all about Zeke.

            “He was always a wild one,” he heard someone behind him say, not even bothering to whisper.  It sounded like the voice had come from right in the middle of the eighth-grade section.  But it was surely an adult’s voice.  Had some adult sneaked in amongst the eighth graders?

            He turned around in the pew to look behind him.  No, there was no adult amongst the eighth graders.

            But he did see everyone, every single person, looking at him.

            He grinned and gave them all a little wave because he thought that’s what they expected him to do.  Something wild.

            Years later he would have the impression that that’s when the funeral ended.  He couldn’t recall anything happening after that.  In fact, for the life of him he wouldn’t be able to remember if Jacky Boy had been there, his body in a coffin.  And, really, what difference did it make?

*

            And so his life as The Wild One Who Killed His Little Brother began.  The killing his brother part he didn’t dispute, even if it had been an accident.  It was the wild one business that he was never clear on even though it predated Jacky Boy’s death.  When had he ever been wild?

            True, he had burned down the aluminum storage shed in the back yard when he was eight when he napalmed his plastic Mattel German Panther tank with lighter fluid on the shed’s plywood floor.  He’d never dreamed the floor would catch fire, he and Jacky Boy barely escaping with their lives before the cans of paint and kerosene went up.  There was no intent to do harm except, symbolically, to the Nazis in the tank.  That’s what you did to bad guys:  burn them up.  In his book it had been an unfortunate accident.  Still, he wasn’t too surprised that his parents didn’t see it that way.

            “There’s no punishment enough, no punishment enough,” his father said.  He sounded more sad than angry.  Maybe he thought the knowledge of the enormity of what he had done was all the punishment Zeke required.  Well, he was wrong.  Zeke was delighted to escape something far more tangible directed at his backside.

            But maybe that was the incident that cemented Zeke’s reputation as a wild child.  (Zeke himself thought it had more to do with the name:  Zeke.  Jacky Boy’s name was of course John.  Had he lived long enough people would have stopped calling him Jacky Boy and called him Jack or John instead, good respectable names.  But Zeke?  It wasn’t short for anything.  It looked stupid and sounded stupid. For a time he tried to pretend he liked the name.  He’d draw the Z as three interconnecting lightning bolts and pretend the name gave him some special powers, like shazam transforming Billy Batson into a superhero.  But even then, as a child, he knew that he had no special powers, knew that Zeke was a stupid name that held him apart, made him suspect.  A name for a wild child.)

            In what way other than the accidental arson had Zeke been a wild child? His parents complained that he did not listen, did not obey them.  True as these charges often were, the transgressions stemmed more from a sort of distraction than willful intent.  He would have obeyed them if he’d remembered to.

            He wasn’t a discipline problem in school, not really. He didn’t always pay attention, but there was that distraction thing again.  And sometimes he spoke out without being called on and off-subject, but this was when he felt he had something more interesting to say than the teachers.  He was always surprised when they didn’t seem grateful for his help.

            He still had friends in high school after the killing although no close friends, but that was okay because he’d never had close friends before, either.

            He had a girlfriend, Debi.  One of Debi’s friends who didn’t like him for some reason asked Debi how she could date a boy who had killed his brother.  Zeke was sitting right there at the table in the cafeteria at the time.  Debi just grabbed his arm, pulled him close, and, giggling and blushing, said, “Because he’s so cute.”

            Zeke had gone home and looked at himself in the bathroom mirror, really looked, and was amazed to see that, yes, he was good looking.  (Years later, after three failed marriages and approaching middle age, Zeke made some comment or did something, who knows what, that a colleague didn’t like, and the colleague said, as if delivering the coup de grace, “Everywhere you look is a mirror.”  Without missing a beat, Zeke replied, “That’s because I’m so cute.”

3

            On to college.

            He was homesick for a while, which would have astonished anyone who’d bought wholly into the wild-child-killer persona or image or myth—whatever it was. 

His second wife—this was years later, obviously—labeled him, to his face, a sociopath, incapable of feeling for others and probably not for himself.

            How could anyone be so wrong?  He wasn’t sure that he was anything but feeling.  The problem was he wasn’t always certain what the very real and sometimes powerful feelings were.  Sad?  Happy?  Angry?  Envious?  Fearful?  They were all simplistic and superficial labels, inadequate and often irrelevant.

            But he did feel.

            He was homesick at college, for a while.  But then he understood that he would have a roommate who would always be there, as his parents had always been there, so then it was all right.  He needed someone always there to see him, form an image of him, an identity.  Otherwise, he felt, he might simply cease to exist.

            The first roommate stuck it out a few weeks and then one day was gone.  The second lasted a bit longer, until the end of the semester, but then he, too, was gone.

            Years later when he would give accounts of various stages of his life—he could be quite entertaining in short stretches—Zeke would claim that he would keep a roommate until the roommate found out that he’d killed his brother, and then the roommate would have trouble sleeping, and then the roommate would be gone.  One of them, he claimed, huddled under his blanket praying over a flashlight, beam on.  Another stole a steak knife from the cafeteria and kept it in his belt until bedtime and then under his pillow.

            Utter nonsense.  He never told either roommate about his brother.  In fact, he matriculated into the state college in the far corner of the state instead of the state college almost on the doorstep of his home to get away from the brother-killer rep, to start over.  It’d been his parents’ idea, but he hadn’t objected.  No biggee either way, really.

            The truth came out fall semester of his sophomore year.  On a whim he decided to give the fraternity route a try.  Why not?

            Rush week.  He was being informally interviewed by one of the big fraternities—where, he was told, he didn’t have a chance—when one of the blue-blazered BMOCs asked him what distinction Zeke Thomas Clarke would bring to the fraternity.  Without even thinking about it, Zeke answered, “Well, do you have anyone else in the house who’s killed his little brother?”

            He was voted into the ranks of that prestigious brotherhood with near unanimity, not, as Zeke in full raconteur mode would later claim, because they were afraid he’d come in the night and murder them in their beds if they rejected him but because the hope was he’d help attract babes.

            He did.

*

            He never had trouble attracting women—the old women-drawn-to-the-bad-boy cliché made flesh.  Quite literally made flesh.  They seemed to think that what a bad boy wanted was sex, so they wanted sex.  Once or twice.  Enough for bragging rights.

            Zeke didn’t think that spoke very well for women, the ease with which he scored.  He wished it were harder, not so that the thrill of the hunt would be keener but so that . . . Well, he did not know “so that.”  He wanted things to slow down, that’s all.  Everything around him was fast while he was slow, an exhibit in a frenetic museum, coeds and frat brothers pausing just long enough to read the WILD CHILD BROTHER KILLER plaque on the pedestal where he stood, bemused.

*

            One coed, Evy Kent, slowed down enough to walk side-by-side with Zeke down the aisle.

            Zeke loved her, loved her at least in the way that he defined love, which was not necessarily the way others defined it, he suspected.  But how was anyone to know?

            Zeke got a degree in civil engineering, Evy in business.  They moved to Springfield, Illinois, where Zeke hired on with a construction company that built roads and bridges all over the Midwest.  Evy got a job as business manager at a Ford dealership.

            After a couple of years, she began an affair with the parts manager.  The service manager must have had a grudge against the parts manager because he sent a letter to Zeke revealing the affair, cum details.

            Evy was in the kitchen reheating leftover lasagna when Zeke finished reading the letter.  He handed it to her.  She read it over from beginning to end two or three times, then held it out to Zeke, put her index finger halfway down the text, and said, “This part here is wrong.”

            Zeke didn’t look.

Then she said, “I think you’d better talk to Barry.”  Barry, i.e., the parts manager.

            They met Barry on an IHOP parking lot.  Evy stayed in the car while Zeke walked over to where Barry was standing next to a Ford pickup.  He looked so much like a parts manager it was startling.

            As Zeke approached, Barry shook his finger at him, not threateningly or admonishingly but more like he wanted to remind him of something.

            “You know that windshield wiper?” Barry said.

            “That what?”

            “That windshield wiper.  The one that broke off in your brother’s hand.  Well, I have a theory about that.  Lookee here.”

Barry turned and took hold of the near windshield wiper on his pickup.  Zeke took a step closer.

            “Now, you probably don’t replace a worn windshield wiper yourself.  Most people get them replaced when they get their car serviced, and that’s fine.  That’s how we make our living, ha ha.  Probably that’s what you do.  But these things are easy to change out.  1, 2, 3, bingo.”

            As he spoke, he lifted the wiper from the windshield, gave it a little tug, and off came the wiper in his hand.

            “See?  Just lift ‘er up, push this doohickey, give it a pull, and off it comes.  Bingo.”

            He did it twice more.  “I see,” Zeke said.

            “Sure,” Barry said, his hands on his hips now.  “I’m betting that’s what happened to your brother.  He got ahold of the wiper and just by dumb luck pushed the doohickey, and off it came.  I’m betting it didn’t break at all.”

            “Ah.”  Zeke thought about it a moment.  “So you’re saying I’m not to blame.”

            This seemed to catch Barry by surprise.  He made a motion with both hands like he was wiping off a vertical surface.

            “Oh, I’m not saying that.”

            They talked a bit more without consequence, and then Evy joined them, and they talked a little more, without consequence.

*

            A few days later, Zeke returned from work to find that Evy had moved out.  She was living with Barry.

            The divorce was amicable.  Their only disagreement was over how much of their possessions Evy would take.  Zeke wanted her to take absolutely everything except his clothes and toiletries, but Evy didn’t have room enough for all that in Barry’s little house.  Finally it was resolved when Zeke rented a storage unit in Evy’s name and crammed it all in.  She and Barry could sell it off at their leisure.  God speed to them.  Zeke just wanted a fresh start.  He wanted to be clean.

            Zeke wasn’t bitter about the affair, had no bad feelings at all for Evy or Barry either one.  In fact, the one memory most vivid of all concerning his marriage and breakup was that strange conversation with Barry on the IHOP parking lot.  How on earth had Barry known about Jacky Boy’s death in such detail?  Evy would have had to have told him, but how would she have known?  Zeke would swear he’d never discussed it with her.  Zeke had married her, after all, because she hadn’t been one of those short-timer coeds seeking merely one wild ride with the bad boy.  She was there for the long haul, he’d thought.

            Zeke didn’t do drugs, didn’t drink enough to blurt secrets out in a drunken haze.  Maybe he talked in his sleep.  If he’d talked in his sleep, though, surely he would have heard himself and said, “Cut it out.  No one wants to hear that old shit.”

            But maybe they did.  Damn.

4

            He thought he was through with women, but women weren’t through with him.  He married Meredith when he was still in his twenties.

            They got along pretty well, well enough that he didn’t want to spoil things by trying to keep his killing of his little brother a secret, then blurting it out in his sleep.  He didn’t want to wind up on another IHOP parking lot.

            It took him longer than he’d intended to get around to telling her, though.  He’d planned on telling her on their honeymoon night but changed his mind when the time came.  It didn’t seem appropriate, somehow.  The honeymoon night was going to be a big deal for Meredith.  Her brother was a Methodist minister, and she herself was very religious and, at twenty-six, still a virgin.  The honeymoon night was important, too, for Zeke.  He hadn’t had sex since he’d met Meredith, long enough that he’d gone back to having wet dreams.

            He kept putting off telling her for one reason or another, mostly for no reason, just putting it off.

            He finally told her on their first anniversary.  She listened solemnly as he told her about the night of Jacky Boy’s death, then about the years that followed and his attempt not to deal with it, because there was no deal to be made, but to live with it.

            She knew he’d been married, so he didn’t bother with that again, but he did tell her about the encounter with Barry on the IHOP parking lot because that dealt directly with the Jacky Boy issue.

            Meredith listened solemnly, sadly, silently, until Zeke said, “I swear to you that’s the only vivid memory I have of being married to Evy.”

            That’s when she just lost it, went “ape-shit,” as he later described it, turned into a crazy woman.

            “That’s it?  That’s it?  That’s the one thing you remember from your first marriage?  Do you not understand how bizarre that sounds?  What about anger, jealousy, a sense of betrayal?  What about love, Zeke, love?  My God, Zeke, what will you remember from our marriage?”

            “Hm.  Well, if I had to guess, I’d guess it’s going to be this conversation right here.”

            That’s when she called him a sociopath.

            The divorce was amicable, though.

*

            After Meredith he did not swear off women, but he did swear off marriage. 

            The years passed.  Then, in his mid-thirties, he met Trish, and he decided that swearing off anything—women, marriage, whole milk—didn’t make much sense.  Take each thing as it comes, do with it what seems best at the time.  Trish wanted him and wanted marriage, and Zeke took Trish as she came.

            Trish was different from any woman he’d been with.  Before, he’d always sought in a woman a calm center, a tranquil oasis where he could seek refuge from the vague chaos within him, without.  Trish, though, was kinetic, spontaneous, unpredictable, an unbalanced gyroscope with auburn hair, hazel eyes, and a rash of freckles across her nose.

            One day she snatched his faded Yankee ballcap off his head and flung it into the Illinois River.  The next day she presented him with a new Yankee cap, but instead of the traditional navy blue and white, it was yellow with white lettering.  “I can’t wear a yellow Yankee cap,” he said, jokingly.  “If you don’t wear it, I’ll walk out and you’ll never see me again,” she said, seriously.  He wore it.  She demonstrated her appreciation in his car parked right outside the restaurant where the conversation had taken place.  Zeke appreciated the gesture but found it a little embarrassing, frankly.

            She told him she’d had a “wild life,” and he saw no reason to doubt her.  But now that she’d turned thirty, she was ready to put the wildness behind her.  She wanted a husband.  She wanted a child.  It was a package deal.

            Zeke was agreeable if not exactly enthusiastic.  He’d done the marriage thing, after all.  But he’d never thought seriously about the possibility of having a child.  Evy hadn’t wanted one, and he and Meredith hadn’t been married long enough for the issue to come up for discussion.

            Zeke tried to get into the spirit of things.  “We might have a son!  I could teach him to play baseball!  But I wouldn’t teach him to drive,” he said, chuckling.

            Trish didn’t get the joke.

            Zeke had neither gone out of his way to talk about Jacky Boy nor taken any pains to avoid the subject.  He dealt with it the same way he’d decided to deal with everything.  Let come what comes.  Do with it what you will.  When he did finally tell her, it was obvious Trish couldn’t wait for him to finish.  “I’ve got that one beat,” she said.  When she was ten, in revenge for some perceived wrong, she put her best friend’s cat in a microwave.  But then she’d lost her nerve and couldn’t push the start button.  She left the kitty in the microwave.  By the time her friend’s mother discovered it, it had suffocated.  “Isn’t life a hoot?” Trish had concluded.

            The marriage lasted four years.  I could have lasted forever as far as Zeke was concerned.  He was content enough with Trish and thought she was with him.  But she wanted that child, and that child didn’t come.

            They spent two of their four years trying to have a child on their own, “nature’s way,” as Trish put it.  Tried different positions as recommended by different books on the subject.  Meticulously timed their intercourse to Trish’s maddeningly irregular cycles for best results.  No results.

            Trish consulted her gynecologist, who advised her to “just relax and keep at it.”

            She began to take homeopathic drugs on the sly, thinking Zeke would object if he found out.  But when he found out anyway, he only said, “Sure, go ahead, what can it hurt?”

            Finally, she told him, “You’re going to have to go get yourself checked out.  The problem’s not me.  My plumbing’s fine.”

            Zeke got himself checked out.  Got the results.  Told Trish, a little sheepishly, “Well, I’ve got enough of the little fellows, but they aren’t too frisky.”

            He floated the idea of adoption.  No.  She wanted her child.  Didn’t he understand that?

            Well, maybe they could find a sperm donor.  She just exploded.  “What?  A sperm donor!  Are you crazy?  Are you just insane?”

            What was she so angry about?  He didn’t understand her.  He’d never, he realized, understood anybody.

            Zeke signed the divorce papers in Springfield and Trish in Chicago, where she was already living with a new man in her life, one several years younger than Zeke.

5

            Zeke thought a man’s life should have an arc, work its way inexorably toward an end commensurate with its beginning and all that came between.  But he could sense no defining arc in his own life.

            Instead, he drifted, drifted into his forties, kept drifting.  How could he do otherwise in an anchorless world?

            Often, he thought of ending it, but what dreams may come?  “Hey, this may be better than what comes next.  Who knows?” a fellow on the next barstool said.  Indeed, who knows?

            More than anything, he wanted to be Ezekiel.  He would wear sackcloth, mortify his flesh with scratch and itch.  Didn’t he deserve mortification, for hadn’t he jerked the steering wheel of Hank Reid’s Ford just a tad to avoid that chuckhole that wasn’t there?  Or was that just a dream, too?  All was muddle, darkness.

            He would wear sackcloth.  He would carry a staff, he would strike the unrighteous.  He would carry a torch against the darkness.  He would be himself a torch.  He would burn.

###

Dennis Vannatta is a Pushcart and Porter Prize winner, with essays and stories published in many magazines and anthologies, including Literary Yard, River Styx, Chariton Review, Boulevard, and Antioch Review.  His sixth collection of stories, The Only World You Get¸ was published by Et Alia Press.